Jack Slocum's blog

Jack Slocum's blog

Jack Slocum’s blog is a breeding ground for innovative UI experimentation. Thoughtful implementations of very intuitive concepts using AJAX including a block-based commenting system that absolutely blew me away.

Comments

Ajax/js is just a tool which if used properly can improve the usability of anyone’s site but more importantly SAVING your company $$$ in bandwidth savings.

So this begs the question – Do people believe that the web is supposed to abide by the antiquated “guidelines” of Jakob Nielsen and remain in the 1990’s? I think NOT. For those who believe in ridgid UX/design rules, please post your company’s stock symbol so I can SELL.

Stop nit-picking and think about how to improve Jack’s functionality and experience. It’s always easy to criticize.

Admitedly, the commenting system isn’t for everyone (or every site) but the JS pop-up works for me, it behaves like a modal dialog window and is fast and responsive. I dislike pop-ups (99% of the time) and they’re particularily akward when working in a tabbed browsing environment. Is this interface overkill for a simple blog, quite possibly, but it’s still a fantastic working prototype of a novel concept.

What’s so special about the comment system? Trying to recreate a popup window behavior on the current page canvas? It’s prety unneccessary, unintuitive and just plain slow and bulky. Not to mention it’s just uncomfortable to use. I would rather see a normal styled popup window for that.

The contents of the comment “window” are good, on the other hand. But it’s nothing new or fancy. The only thing that’s worth mentioning (in my humble opinion) is the idea of commenting blocks and a good use of AJAX for that task. But the interface? It is something that repels me from that site.